


For Luck

by DollyPop



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: F/M, Healing, Kissing, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-19
Updated: 2015-11-19
Packaged: 2018-05-02 10:11:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5244425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollyPop/pseuds/DollyPop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marie still wasn’t healed enough to go to Russia with him and as her partner, it was on his shoulders to tell her that he was going. </p><p>Alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Luck

Marie still wasn’t healed enough to go to Russia with him, and though he doesn’t _need_ a weapon, he finds that going on a mission without her feel foreign. He grew so accustomed to her since she was assigned as his weapon. 

It wasn’t an assignment anymore, though, they all knew that. She went with him after Justin, willingly, even if she didn’t have a duty to him if he were in the poor graces of their God. No, it hadn’t been obligation on either of their parts for a long while.

He didn’t have to watch over her, then, either.

She was healing, at least, that much was good. Not healed, certainly not healed enough to fight, but healing. She wasn’t bleeding, anymore, her open wounds closing up, her bruises fading.

He unclenched his fist, taking in a deep breath. Marie was healed enough to be able to look at him, to see if he was off kilter, to read him: he couldn’t walk into her bedroom cum hospital room so tense, so heavy.

She’d been denying morphine for about two days, already. She was definitely in her right mind to hear the news. And, besides, he could soften it with food.

People enjoy food. He hears sustenance is a requirement of life and that it can bring comfort, to others. It was just broth, but that point still stood. He readjusted his hold on the bowl.

He hesitated at her door.

Marie still wasn’t healed enough to go to Russia with him and as her partner, it was on his shoulders to tell her that he was going.

Alone.

Well, not alone. With Maka, with Soul, with Kim and Jackie. But not with her. He’d have no partner to walk with him, no warm weapon in his palm. No Marie.

He knocks on her door though he knows there is nothing much for her to hide from him, anymore. The internal damage she sustained from Justin ended up being worse than he’d have liked, and the exploratory laparotomy he had to perform was burned into his brain, that he had to take her blouse off for every reason he didn’t want to suture her wounds shut, that he had to seal her after opening her abdomen up. He’d seen almost all her skin, bare and warm, but not in the way he wanted. Not if he had to touch her with a needle.

Anyone else he’d be fine performing surgery on.

But not Marie. That’s not how he wanted to see her. He didn’t want to look at her with a scalpel in his hands for the rest of his life.

He knocks on her door and only turns the knob when he hears her give her go-ahead for him to step in. It is her room, and he plays by her rules. Never mind that it was, before, just a room in his house, something no one else had claim to: it was hers, now. Hers for however long she’d see fit to stay.

He walks in and she’s laying there, half her face bandaged, no doubt chewing her inner cheek to bits as she struggled to sit up against her pillows. He scowled without meaning to, grimacing at the fact that she had multiple bruised ribs, as well as three hairline fractures, hence the pressure bandage around them, and yet she was still trying to sit up. When she saw his expression, she sheepishly sunk back down and he rolled his eyes behind his glasses, suddenly wanting to take them off and rub the bridge of his nose.

Death, would the woman care about her own well-being for even a single moment?

“. . .Sorry,” she said, practically reading his mind, as she was one to do. Knowing him as well as she did, having been enveloped by and also inside of his soul, well, one doesn’t walk away from that without some sense of being able to sense the other’s thought process.

His responding “Hm” was only accompanied by him setting the bowl of broth down on her bedside table, looking over her IV line and checking her vitals, her pulse, and whether she remembered to take her medication or not. When she passed each test with flying colors, only then did he look at her.

“How’s the pain?”

It was strange to ask that. He wasn’t exactly a doctor who was used to caring about painless procedures for his patients. Namely because his patients were either dead or doomed for death in the very near future, anyway. Still, he had a vial of morphine on the desk in the corner, where he’d set up shop, for the past few days as though anticipating for Marie to show even the slightest wavering in her stubbornness.

“It’s fine.”

He didn’t look amused.

“You’ll have to sit up to eat, if that’s going to cause you mass discomfort, it would be easier on your body and your long term healing if you accepted some painkiller.”

“I’m okay, Franken. Really. . .oh, don’t look at me like that!” she huffed, flicking her gaze to the side. “I’m alright, I can sit up.”

He was tempted to roll his eyes, again, but he only sighed through his nose. Sit up or no, she couldn’t do so by herself, as she well demonstrated when he walked in, so, wordlessly, one of his usually ruinous hands grasped at her upper arm, moving her forward enough so that the other could settle on her back, gently easing her up onto her pillows. Marie bit at her lip, and he pretended that he didn’t notice, and she wiggled backward, her breath hitching whenever she moved in a way that jostled her too much, until she was in a comfortable position.

That was one downside to her staying in the lab as opposed to a true hospital room: he didn’t exactly have a proper hospital bed. He’d never needed one, in the past.

He hadn’t cared for the comfort of a great many who stepped into his abode up until very recently: it would have been a pointless investment. He didn’t even have a partner, up until the whole kishin business.

A very small, very fragile looking partner, though delicate was not what The Pulverizer would usually be described: his palm was settled between her shoulder blades and it almost took up the entire space of that small hollow. She was so. . .miniscule, laying there, staring up at him with her amber eye warming, blinking in confusion.

“Is. . .something wrong?” she asked, her golden orb flicking over his face, already having detected something was amiss.

“Are you okay to eat?” he asked, instead.

Stupid, on his part. But any answer he gave, she’d know something _was_ wrong, or, at least, that he had something unpleasant to tell her. She closed her eye, resting her weight backward, and he found that he had no problem supporting her with just his one hand.

“What is it?”

“If you’re going to talk, you might as well be lying down.”

“I’m already sitting. Is it bad?”

“No. Just a mission.”

“For who?”

There was the briefest pause as he thought about how to tell her, before he simply settled on throwing plans to the wayside. “I’m expected in Russia by tomorrow.”

“What?” she asked the slightest edge of panic coming into her voice, her eye snapping open and staring at his face. “But I-“

When he looked at her, she knew. He hadn’t realized he was avoiding her gaze up until he was locked on it.

“. . .I’m still injured,” she finished,  this time, in understanding.

“Yes. You are.”

She looked around the room before she slumped and he took his hand off of her back so she could go into the pillows, entirely. It wasn’t good of him to have touched her for so long, anyway. She didn’t have to be upright since they were just having a discussion, anyway. His palm felt cold, and she moved around as though to get comfortable before she loosed a sigh.

“When are you leaving?”

“A few hours.”

She nodded. He could almost write out what she must have been thinking, that there was no one to spare for him to partner with. Not Spirit, who was needed at the DWMA, not Azusa who wasn’t Stein’s style of fighting, besides, not any other high level weapon.

If something happened. . .

“I’ll be fine,” he said, near annoyed with how gentle his voice came out. They were trained to expect this for all of their lives: danger was part of the package.

And yet, after just a moment, she reached out, her soft fingertips pressing into the back of his hand and that annoyance was gone. He’d always marveled at the fact that someone who ruined and destroyed as easily as she could have such a smooth touch. He pulled his hand away, slightly, enough to flip it so her palm was settling onto his.

He didn’t have to repeat anything. She wasn’t happy about it, but she trusted him; trusted him more than she could ever say: which was why she didn’t have to say it. They’d moved past that point what felt like ages ago.

“Come back in one piece, okay?”

 “I make no promises.”

She shook her head and looked at where her hand was still on his, and he realized that he’d been absentmindedly stroking her wrist with his thumb.

When he didn’t stop, when her eye cut back up, he watched her take in a deep breath before she seemed to sink into the pillows, waiting for a moment.

“Can I kiss you?” she asked, her lips barely moving, but he made out the delicate movement of her throat as she swallowed, nervously. “For good luck,” she added, as though to cover up the fizzy feeling in her soul.

She didn’t want to kiss him for “good luck”. Who did she think she was fooling? His eyebrows went up, eyes blinking in surprise before the corners of his mouth tipped up, amused.

She didn’t have to ask him for something like that.

“No, Marie. I don’t think you can-“ and he took note of the immediate reaction, of her soul shrinking in embarrassment, of her immediately opening her mouth to say something, to tell him to forget it, that she was sorry. “-you’re still injured. You should remain lying down.”

At that, she froze. Color came onto her face, and their connected gaze broke, settling slightly lower to where his smirk was forming.

“Then. . .” she seemed to chew the inside of her cheek, her jaw moving slightly before she locked onto his eyes again. “Then can you kiss _me_?”

Her voice was dropping, getting softer and softer as he leaned over her, the food he’d originally brought in already forgotten, her lower lip dropping down. “For good luck?” he asked, trying to hold down his grin. Marie’s eyelid drooped and she focused on his mouth, emboldened by his teasing lilt.

“I’m injured, right? You can kiss it better.”

He chuckled slightly. “You want me to kiss all your injuries to health? I haven’t read any studies on that particular field of medicine.”

He wondered if it was going to become routine, taking comfort in one another while the threat of death loomed heavy and thick in the future.

It didn’t matter. In that moment, there was no oppressive Death, no mirrors in the room, either, to remind him of such. There was only Marie, who had a heart the shape of a sledgehammer and twice as resilient.

“Could you?” she asked, and he wondered if she knew what she was asking of him, but he could feel that she did. She knew all her injuries: her ribs, her surgery scar, her bruised hips.

Not even an insane man would say no.

“I can,” he answered, bringing his palm down to her pillow as support while he bent close to her, careful that her hair wasn’t caught beneath his palm. When his nose bumped her’s, he stopped completely, holding the position until she tilted her chin up and their mouths almost brushed.

He could feel the movement her lips made from that close, how warm her breath was.

 “Will you?”

He brought his fingers to her pulse, feeling how quickly it was beating, how alive she was, even after such a brutal fight. Slowly, he brought his knee to her bed and the mattress dipped under his weight. She slid her touch up his arm, free from the lab-coat for once, until she settled onto his shoulder, fluttering her eyelashes until she closed her eye. And he only cupped the back of her neck, supporting her head and tilting her face, meeting her and closing those final few spaces until he found her smile with his own.

**Author's Note:**

> It's suuuuper late, but this was written for Soul Eater Angst Week! The prompt was "Battle Scars".


End file.
